Julia Michaels Quotes

I just write songs and hope that they do well. I'm sure there is some pressure from someone at the label, but I'd rather keep away from it.

I've sold a lot of records. Did I keep other artists from eating?

There have been artists who've sold out arenas one year, and the next they can't fill a theatre. There's always more to achieve.

When I first started writing songs, I was probably about ten or twelve years old, and the first thing you think as a songwriter is, 'Can this be a hit? Can this come out, and people are going to hear the song and like the song, and then they're going to like you, and you'll get famous and rich?' That hasn't changed a bit.

The second we were done on 'The Sing-Off,' we were like, 'All right, now we're competing with Rihanna and Taylor Swift.' We've always set the bar high. We want a hit.

One thing about being in Metallica is I've always felt challenged.

I'ma continue to make records, continue to make hits, continue to be what I am, legendary.

I think it's all about the people who listen to your music, and loving playing and writing. Once you've got those two, and they're your main two priorities, then radio and TV and all the other stuff that comes with it will come. But that's not the be-all end-all.

I become more seasoned, it's less interesting to try and compete in the pop market.

I had no idea what to expect when we did Ladies' Night. I didn't think it was going to get nominated for a Grammy. I didn't know that we would have to perform on the MTV Awards show.

If you can't handle the responsibility of a hit single, don't write one.

Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition.

You write a hit the same way you write a flop.

I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.

The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my influence. And they'll tell you if you ask.

I don't ever have the pressure of making a hit, because I've never had a hit song, per se. The closest thing to a hit song was 'Shiraz,' and it's not your prototypical hit song, with a catchy hook and all this other stuff.

It was hard to work and work and work and not get your music played on the radio.

Swimming upstream in the music business is a hard thing to do.

As a new artist, you come out, and there are so many other new artists. It seems like there's a whole wave of new artists that come along every year. In '05, I was part of the crop. It was a lot harder trying to set myself apart from the rest of the pack.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I'd be writing hit songs every minute.

It only took me six months to get a record deal, but it took me 20 years to have a hit.

To me, being in the big time is not that big of a deal. I've been there; I know what it is. It's exciting, but it's also a lot of work and pressure. I love sort of flying under the radar where we can play theaters and sell CD's on the Internet, and it's really kind of a cool time.

But these days, it's hard to make it just on a beautiful voice.

I don't know if it's my music, my lyrics, my sound, and knowing the music business the way I do-all I can say is, my career has lasted way longer than I expected.

My father would make record after record, and he'd be so surprised at what would sell and what wouldn't.